"Rudy Rucker - Wetware" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

It was the day after Christmas, and Stahn was plugged in.
With no work in sight, it seemed like the best way to pass the
time… other than drugs, and Stahn was off drugs for good, or so
he said. The twist-box took his sensory input, jazzed it, and passed
it on to his cortex. A pure software high, with no somatic
aftereffects. Staring out the window was almost interesting. The
maggies left jagged trails, and the people looked like actors.
Probably at least one of them was a meatie. Those boppers just
wouldn’t let up. Time kept passing, slow and fast.
At some point the vizzy was buzzing. Stahn cut off the
twist-box and thumbed on the screen. The caller’s head appeared, a
skinny yellow head with a down-turned mouth. There was
something strangely soft about his features.
“Hello,” said the image. “I’m Max Yukawa. Are you Mr.
Mooney?”
Without the twist, Stahn’s office looked unbearably bleak. He
hoped Yukawa had big problems.
“Stahn Mooney of Mooney Search. What can I do for you,
Mr. Yukawa?”
 “It concerns a missing person. Can you come to my office?”
“Clear.”
Yukawa twitched, and the vizzyprint spat out a sheet with
printed directions. His address and the code to his door-plate.
Stahn thumbed off, and after a while he hit the street.
Bad air out there, always bad air—yarty was the word for it
this year. 2030. Yart = yawn + fart. Like in a library, right? Sebum
everywhere. Sebum = oily secretion which human skin exudes. Yarts
and sebum, and a hard vacuum outside the doooooooommmme.
Dome air—after the invasion, the humans had put like a big
airtight dome over Disky and changed the town’s name to Einstein.
The old Saigon into Ho Chi Minh City routine. The boppers had
been driven under the Moon’s surface, but they had bombs hidden
all over Einstein, and they set off one a week maybe, which was not
all that often, but often enough to matter for sure for sure. And of
course there were the meaties—people run by remote bopper
control. What you did was to hope it didn’t get worse.
So OK, Stahn is standing out in the street waiting for a slot
on the people-mover. A moving sidewalk with chairs, right. He felt
like dying, he really really felt like dying. Bad memories, bad
chemistry, no woman, bad life.
“Why do we bother.”
The comment was right on the beam. It took a second to
realize that someone was talking to him. A rangy, strungout dog of
a guy, shirtless in jeans with blond hair worn ridgeback style. His
hair was greased up into a longitudinal peak, and there were extra
hairgrafts that ran the hairstrip right on down his spine to his ass.
Seeing him made Stahn feel old. I used to be different, but now I’m the
same. The ridgeback had a handful of pamphlets, and he was staring